Facilitated chain of events that led to the end of the Cold War

‘I get so mad when they make a comparison between the 1930s and now. Anybody who says that is a damn liar.’

EUGENE WHELAN Federal agriculture minister, speaking about the economy in 1982

If Eugene Francis Whelan had been born an American, God forbid, they would be making a movie right now about the raggedy-ass kid, born in a drafty log cabin in the backwoods of Essex County, who went on to become the plain-talking but deceptively shrewd facilitator of a chain of events that ended the Cold War.

We can only hope that Whelan, the irascible, but immensely lovable, curmudgeon, went to his eternal reward wrapped in the warm memory of his finest achievement, the eye-opening 1980s friendship he cultivated with a Soviet ambassador that led to the dismantling of the Soviet Union.

Whelan confided a few years ago, over roast chicken at his favourite Swiss Chalet, that he was once called in by prime minister Pierre Trudeau for a face-to-face chat about his many visits to the Soviet Embassy.

The RCMP had, of course, been recording those visits and Trudeau, peering at Whelan through those intense, hooded eyes, wanted assurance that his agriculture minister, who also served on the defence committee, hadn’t been giving away national secrets.

Whelan assured Trudeau he was just spending quality time with his buddy Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev, the Soviet ambassador who came from a similar rustic background, having been raised in a peasant family in a small village on the Volga River.

Instead of giving away secrets, Whelan had been sowing seeds, cultivating a close friendship with Yakovlev. That bond would lead to a historic 1983 meeting in Whelan’s backyard where Yakovlev and future Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev went for a stroll and candidly agreed on the need for the massive reforms that, in the end, brought down the Soviet Union and pushed back the doomsday clock.

If you and I sleep soundly, without fear of missiles raining down on us, we can thank, in no small part, a populist Whelan who showed Yakovlev, the intellectual force behind Gorbachev, that there were better ways to run a country than totalitarian Communism.

It’s an overworked expression. But in Whelan’s case, they really did break the mould. One of nine kids raised in the Great Depression by his widowed mom after his dad, a Conservative, died of cancer and they lost the farm and their awardwinning Holsteins, Whelan grew up with an abiding hatred of the banking industry.

When he railed against Bay Street financiers and spoke passionately about putting bread on the table for the poor, it came straight from the gut.

Whelan could be edgy and irritable and, like any effective politician, he had a big-league ego. He loved telling people he was Canada’s best-known cabinet minister, which he was. He was the real deal, a noguff straight shooter who routinely tossed aside prepared speeches in order to tell it like it is, and Canadians loved him for it. He wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in the topdown, buttoned-up Stephen Harper regime.

There were times, of course, when his brutal honesty brought him a world of trouble. In recession-battered 1982, in what was supposed to be a routine speech to municipal politicians, he lashed out against parallels being drawn with the Great Depression.

“I get so mad when they make a comparison between the 1930s and now. Anybody who says that is a damn liar,” railed Whelan, pointing out that medicare, hospitalization and social services weren’t available when his family was struggling to eat.

Talk about a force. That same year, in an interview with me, his designated pincushion, the “raging bull of Canadian politics,” declared war on all his enemies, including The Windsor Star which he charged was leading a vendetta against him.

“Those who treat me rough, they’re going to have a fight on their hands,” he growled while invoking the Deity in his quest for vengeance. Whelan, no-holds-barred, even took shots at cabinet colleagues who meekly followed orders from bureaucrats. “Not enough of them understand about people, poverty and work … they’re very sincere and dedicated people but it takes more than that,” he scoffed.

Whelan was Canada’s greatest agriculture minister. He dominated his sector like no other and did so on a shoestring budget, one befitting a Depression survivor who had learned how to stretch nickels. But he was far more than that. He was a patriot whose passion for Canada was unbounded.

He was, above all, a frank and honest man. A rare breed, indeed.